/pmp/

/pmp/ personal music player general - X3 edition
This thread is for the discussion portable mp3/FLAC/OGG Vorbis players.
>inb4 phone

Useful Guide(s)
• The General /pmp/ Guide has been updated again, thanks to your efforts → spit.mixtape.moe/view/fefcb363
• Converting an iPod video 5G/5.5G to a rockboxed player with an msata SSD and a 3000 mAh battery nullvoid.station.moe/Freedom-Hardware/Video5G-Rockbox/
• Third party battery guide
iflash.xyz/3rd-party-extended-battery-guide/Guide for iPod 6G/7G needs adding/making
• Rockbox 3.14 released, significant battery increase compared to 3.13. The battery increase was from the cpu scaling patches, which has been available on dev builds for a (long) while.
• Reminder to use Rockbox DEV builds when available.
• Use the SonyNWDestTool to remove the volume limiter/warnings on most of the Walkman series
rockbox.org/wiki/SonyNWDestTool
• Please keep taking nice pics of your /pmp/'s so that they can be used as OP pics, I'm going through them in order of posting so yours will come up eventually.

Pic related my Rockbox'd XDuoo X3 which arrived recently. Very nice player with good buttons, decent oled screen, and most importantly 2x μSD slot.
Battery life is shit (about 8-10 hours I'd guess) but it's miles nicer to use than the Sansa Clip Sport I had before.

Clip Jam is no Clip+

Same can be said about the Clip Sport. Avoid.

Clip sport firmware is just horrible. No gapless playback, no queueing of any kind, EVERY TIME you start it you have to put the volume past halfway and confirm you don't care if you hurt your ears, it doesn't sort the folders alphabetically in folder mode..
You'd think they would actually give 2 shits and make that stuff usable, but no.

bumping this shit
Anyone have tips on making rockbox use less power?

no point in making this thread a general, there is not enough interest

I've seen it get some replies

Sure it get replies, but like that guy said, this isn't really a topic with enough movement to have a "general"

look at this thread, perfect example

most of the generals are low energy and pushed by 4 or 5 people, you must be new here

Is the fiio x1 a good choice? Wanting the old iPod aesthetic with the wheel and z-reviews didn't shit on it that hard. 10hours batterylife is a bit hit or miss.

10 hours is miss and miss.

I'm not opposed to charging it since I got a 20,000mah bank that I carry with me. I just want to know if the wheel is that bad or if it's been fixed with firmware updates.

I plan on buying the hifi walker h2. Any reson why I shouldn't?

My fucked up ipod classic made me left the DAP game for now.
Maybe one day I'll return. Using my phone now but I don't listen as much as I used to.

...

delet this

Why?

Any recommendations for a high resolution player, my Sony pmp is loosing it battery and I need a new one

Xduoo X3 for cheap
Shanling M1 or M2s for fancy
Sony A2x or A3x for Sony.

It is 2017, I can live with a 10 hour battery but it is actually unacceptable, I get more hours out of my 80 dollar cellphone ffs, not spending 100 dollars on a 10hour battery pmp.

Is there something decent around with a reasonable price?

Right now I have a generic "MP4" player that only supports MP3, but has more power than my cellphone and helps to not dry the phone's battery of course.

I would like to get something more decent next year.

What do you think about the Benjie S5? bought the silver one for $21 USD, still waiting for it.

I love that it's tiny and has a little part where you can clip it.

Are AGPTEK ones worth it?

Your phone has a class D amp and a low power codec.
Meme DAPs run on class A amps and desktop pro DACs and other memes.
Most of them actually have 2000mah+ battery.
If you want only battery get cheap shit or Sony.

I guess you are right, high quality audio comes at a cost.

Looking at Sony devices there is either sub 100 dollars abominations, or insanely expensive ones.

I just fell in love with the XDUOO X10, I don't know how it sounds lol but it looks so gorgeous I might actually buy it just for that.

>xDuoo
>Gorgeous
They have the worst design out there. Try looking at some FiiOs, Shanlings or Cowons.

idk about the X1, but the M3 is pretty good... battery lasts for the whole week (~3h/day)

X3 actually has a decent amount of battery I think, it just uses a lot of power. It actually gets quite hot while running.
By the way, rockbox has a setting to change the amount of oversampling the DAC does (32x, 64x, 128x). Would setting this to 32x reduce power consumption?

Yes they all got fuckhuge battery for a MUSIC PLAYER and burn through it like nothing.
You can read the cs4398 datasheet, they have power specs.

>I just fell in love with the XDUOO X10, I don't know how it sounds lol but it looks so gorgeous I might actually buy it just for that.
Be advised that the native XDuoo firmware is complete dogshit. On the X3 at least it skips the first second of every song, and it has a few % playback speed difference.
It does have a wheel though, which is great.

>mfw loading 192kbps 16bit 44.1kHz AAC files onto my phone that sound perfectly fine on both small and large systems, nigh indistinguishable from CD quality AND saving a lot of space in the process.
Hi-Fi audio on the go is utterly pointless. Most of my music is stored in at least lossless format on my PC and I'm looking to upgrade as much as I can to Hi-Fi, but that's for archiving purposes only. For actual listening, you _do not_ need to take fuck huge archival quality music on the go. Complete waste of space.

Still my favorite. Shame about how it was never really supported after release.

From the datasheet:
>The CS4398 operates in one of three oversampling modes based on the input sample rate. Single-Speed mode supports input sample rates up to 50 kHz and uses a 128x oversampling ratio. Double-Speed mode supports input sample rates up to 100 kHz and uses an oversampling ratio of 64x. Quad-Speed mode supports input sample rates up to 200 kHz and uses an oversampling ratio of 32x
Does that mean the 32x setting is actually better?
Can't find anything about power usage w.r.t. this setting but thanks for the pointer.

It's good shit, zune boards had some decent homebrew for it. Too bad about the lack of love from microsoft though.

Looking for an alternative to the Clip+ I lost ages ago and cannot find anything worthy.

I'll primarily use it in the gym so it has to be compact. Clip function would be very nice as well but I could manage without it, as long as the damn thing is small enough. Looked into the AGPtek A12 but the super slow fast forward is unacceptable when listening to longer podcasts. You literally have to hold the FF button down for minutes on end.

Is there really no alternative to a rockboxed Clip+?

This looks nice, is it any good?

My mom lost her iPod Shuffle and I said this would be the best replacement. Not quite as slick/simple as the Shuffle, but shouldn't be too much for her and has fm radio which is nice.

Expensive compared to chinkshit (doesn't seem possible to find for under $50 Canadian) but all the simple/shuffle-type ChinkPods looks like absolutely GARBAGE (none cost more than $3 on Ali)

...explain how this new one is worse than the old Clip+, it looks pretty much identical, like a case refresh.

Same here, my Clip+ died today after a slow death.
Starting crashing and giving read/write errors a month or two back. Reflashed it, Windows reported disk errors as well.
At this point it will play 1 or 2 songs then crash, giving errors like: Error accessing playlist control file. and general crashes with disk errors.
I think the internal flash died, so nothing I can do about it.
Has been my daily driver for over 4 years, maybe even more. I just like having physical buttons for both volume, skip, etc and also it being small was handy.

Not sure what to get now, my 8gb Nexus 5 just doesn't cut it as a music player.

You seem like you've looked into the AGPtEK A12. Besides the slow FF thing, is there much difference between it and the Clip Jam/Plus?

>using a dedicated music player
>in almost 2018
Explain yourself.

Just purchased a SanDisk Clip Sport. It's alright, 4GB player with a microSD slot for 28USD. I wish it could read the microSD card I have in it when linked to my computer to edit files from there. I'm somewhat regretting not getting a model that could do Bluetooth though. Despite not using it, I feel like it'd be more useful in the long run and be better in the gym.

Are there any iPod Nano form-factor players from China that aren't total junk?

>using a dildo to hammer a nail
>in any year
Explain yourself.

My old Clip+ supported Rockbox, so that is a major difference. To be honest, I have 0 experience with the default Clip+ firmware. Flashed Rockbox the second I got the Clip+ and never looked back. The A12 is not rockbox compatible. That means we have to deal with annoying shit like the super slow fast forward. The rockboxed Clip+ was the almost perfect gym device.

One other major deal is that the A12 does not remember where you left off. Well, it does but only for the current track. If you listen to podcast-a, then change to podcast-b and later want to continue with podcast-a, the A12 plays podcast-a from the beginning instead of the position where you left off.

Sad to hear. Good luck finding a replacement.

I have a Fiio X5 gen 2 and I'm thinking of upgrading, any good stuff for under 400$?
The scrolling wheel on the X5 I'm using is glitchy af, worked well at the beginning but now it's just fucking out completely.
Wanted to get gen 1 but got 2 instead..
Whether or not it has touch I couldn't care less, but I'd appreciate it if it looked good, but even that can be overlooked if it's really good.

Anyone used a Sandisk Clip Sport or AGPTEK G05?

Look only slightly bigger than the ones with the the OLED monochrome displays, and I doubt the screen is on enough to affect battery life.

Welp, there you go lads. Those dubs do not lie.

Bought a broken iPod on Kijiji. Owner says he dropped it and wouldn't play anymore. I'm guessing it's a busted HDD since battery and LCD seem OK. Pic related.

Any suggestions which way to go to replace storage? Guide in OP is about mSATA drive but I'm interested in CF/miniSD etc options since they use less power...

CF adapter w/ SD slot, 128 or 256GB (or higher if you're loaded) SD card, new battery, clickwheel and case for good measure, and you're set. Should only be ~$80 for everything listed (ie full upgrade/refurb)

>tfw I have two iPod 5Gs, 30GB
one of them is a little more beat up and needs a new battery but other than that they work fine. Is it worth doing a new battery + sd mod?

I heard the micro sd mod makes it feel really light to you might want some sort of weight to put inside

Seriously what's the point of putting flash storage into one of these when you can get a much tinier player with flash storage today?

>CF adapter w/ SD slot
Do you have any suggestions which brand/model I should try first? I know there's few of them and I'm not sure which one will work out of the box without needing too much rework...

As for the rest, I'm gonna order a new case for sure. This one has some scratches and nicks but it's still OK. I'll get a new case since why not... it's cheap as fuck now.

>Is it worth doing a new battery + sd mod?
Fuck yeah man. Old-new stock iPod Classic is something like $400 now. And iPod Classic is still unbeaten by any chinkshit (trust me, I've bought 2 diff players from China (BENJIE and RUIZU).

Interesting. Not sure I care about weight. But it's dense as fuck right now. I like it. Hmm... I'll see what I'll do.

>Seriously what's the point of putting flash storage into one of these when you can get a much tinier player with flash storage today?
Yeah, but they're all shit. Have you even tried them? I have something like 5 diff players in a drawer next to me. Not a huge fan of any of them. My brother's iPod Classic beats them all. That's why I bought a broken one to try to fix it.

I listen to 2+ hour long mp3 files. Does your PMP resume playing after turning it off and on?

rockbox has a bootloader mod that lets you run almost 100% off SD, leaving the internal flash.
If it's already dead you can't do it though.

Look at Shanling players.

Mine does but I set it to reset instead.

This is an actually necessary general considering how more and more phone are removing the jack. Music players are making a comeback baby

clip>clip+

Those are some good looking players, any prior experience with them?

>I wish it could read the microSD card I have in it when linked to my computer to edit files from there.
That should be possible.

battery life is very good, interface is OK but not as good as rockbox obvs.

Please, sir. Which PMP do you own?
Ideally if you skip forwards then skip back again it would resume where you skipped forward. Is this an option?

I think my Clip+ does that.

Rockbox on the clip can resume from where it stopped, idk about default firmware.

I had a Shanling M2. UI is laggy, has the usual 10h battery life and runs hot. Still very usable however, and these issues are not exclusive to shanling.
Sound quality beats my current ipod classic.

No, it resumes where you left off.
This should be standard on anything that isn't a ATJ player (check DAP guide for an idea of what those are), but check reviews just to be sure.

Suddenly relevant again since phones are intent on killing off their headphone jacks.

>Suddenly relevant again since phones are intent on killing off their headphone jacks.
Yeah, jack's days seem to be numbered in mobile.
PMP is the way to go if you like music.

is this snake oil?

Use your phones you autists Jesus.

It's bit heavy but yes, it's good.

>filename
xduoo x3

yes and you throw out all your tools and buy a swiss army knife.

I'm looking to buy a cheap music player for work since I can't have my phone with me.

Any suggestions?

ive been tinkering with a 5.5g ipod video i got ages ago, I tried replacing the hdd with an iflash adapter but either way itunes will freeze completely while the ipod is connected to my pc (i cant restore it since this is the case). I got it to boot once with the original hard drive and that was it.

clean your flex cables with IPA.

its late and a sunday, are there any alternatives I can use to Isopropyl or should I just wait until tomorrow and get some?

...

which pmp is pictured there OP? That looks very 80's retro japan.

wait. world's not gonna end. get some 99% IPA (it's only few bucks) and clean all the connectors with it. there's probably lots of oxidation on them. and while you're at it, inspect all the solder joints and use IPA to clean them and see if there's any frosted or bad joints. flex cable itself could be damaged as well but that's not very likely. inspect it anyway. also, lightly rub the ZIF socket as well.

it looks like bad connections are giving you those problems.

ps: there's also a cleaner called DEOXIT that's made for this job but it's expensive and not easy to find in stores. it's better than IPA though.

I need a mp3/mp4 player...
>Cheap (30-50€)
>No old ass explorer like old phones from 2005
>Physical buttons !

Thx !

yes

Recently got an x5 and it's great except for how it organizes music. The songs category shows file names so songs start of as "01-Track" instead of "Track."

Good battery and sound though. Love how much space it can carry with two sd slots

>filename
xduoo x3

buy a clip+ like everyone else

>I wish it could read the microSD card I have in it when linked to my computer to edit files from there.
huh? mine lets you do that

192 with 16 resolution is worthless. 192 is also worthless since it's not a 192 24 bit master. Instead some jerk off upscaled for no benifcial reason at all because the information was never there

You realize anything with a bit rate isn't lossless

I'd like to get anything that sound better than my Redmi Note 3 Pro but also has the ability to send scrobbles to last.fm for autism problems. Should I just get a new phone in some years that a really good DAC like these last HTC 10?

What is the cheapest player that you guys consider decent enough? i am not looking for any specific features maybe just that i can run rockbox but, thats not a must.
also. what older players should I pick up if i ever go thrift shopping and find them?

xduoo x2

I need a pmp with bluetooth, as simple as possible for a gift, any recomendations? thanks in advance

Never used but the AGPTek C05 is cheap and outputs bluetooth.

First, so you know: Benjie and Agptek's the same brand.

I have the Agptek Rocker aka the Benjie T6. It's the device used to kill the horse in the related video.

I think it's worth the $40 because of the slightly improved audio and the ability to play 48000 Hz flac. But if you just want some basic music player then it's probably not worth getting it over the $15 Ruizu 02 - which is limited to 44100 Hz but it's just fine in general and there's little difference if you're using cheap airbuds. I guess it depends on your budget and requirements.

RUIZU X26

Is this a solid well made item or just flimsy plastic? I'm intrigued by the low price...

oversampling is done to minimize the ultrasonic artifacts that DACs inherently produce and to allow a less agressive analogue low pass filter on the output stage

Like dithering an noise shaping its very technical stuff that mathematicly makes sense but real world may not give you better sound (i like dithering switched off and also i once built a zero oversampling cd player based in phillips tda 1540 chipset - it gave a more analogue sound)

Basicly if you cant turn oversampling off just leave it at x128 it also will have absolutely no effect on battery life ... its all done in silicon

24bit/48khz lossless on the go changed my life.. the files arent that big, also its wierd alot of studio released stuff doesnt really sound that better in 24bit verses 16bit(bad re mastering dynamics) but alot of vinyl rips and tape rips on the torrent scene i get really really sing in 24 bit... its all down to your source material and yes its totally backwards and doesnt make sense

Why wouldn't you use the best possible audio quality format on the go?

If you have something in 24bit 48kHz lossless then why wouldn't you just use that? A 64 GB SD card was really expensive just a few years ago. These days it's like $20. 32 GB cards are like $10. Most PMP's let you swap the SD card pretty easily if you actually fill a 64 GB SD card and space is an issue - so just buy a small SD card wallet and a few more cards if space is an issue.

I don't care if it's "a waste", that's no reason not to use the best possible alternative.

Honestly, though, the hassle of converting is also a real issue. If I have a folder with a bunch of flac files - which my pmp can play just fine - then I can just drag those files over and I'm done OR I can go ahead and spend time converting them into a lesser format to "save space". How is that not just utterly pointless?